Since 2009 the Big Ears Festival has brought a massive slate of experimental music to Knoxville, Tennessee, and they’ve just announced their lineup for next spring (the festival occurs during the weekend of March 28-30). It’s kind of hard to contain my excitement here since I’m a sucker for this sort of thing, but if you’re a fan of the drone-ier and noisier side of music, this lineup is a dream. Headlined by Steve Reich, who will be performing his masterpiece Music For 18 Musicians in full (with Ensemble Signal), as well as a new piece inspired by two Radiohead songs, the festival is appropriately also bringing in Jonny Greenwood, who recently announced a new Indian-inspired composition titled “Water.” And it just gets better from there. John Cale and Television are pretty big draws, but the smaller acts are even more exciting. Mark Ribot is doing a solo guitar performance of Charlie Chaplin’s score to The Kid (which is minor Chaplin if we’re splitting hairs, but who cares). Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, and Stephen O’Malley are performing a three-guitar assault, instead of working on a new Sunn O))) record. Dominick Fernow (Prurient) will be bringing performing the charred techno he makes under his Vatican Shadow moniker. Also there’s drone god Tim Hecker and 2013 favorites Julia Holter and Oneohtrix Point Never, the latter of which put out my personal No. 1 album of 2013. Finally we’ve got Colin Stetson (getting to play his excellent solo album on a break from touring and recording with Arcade Fire) former Emeralds guitarist, Mark McGuire, who put out one of our favorite songs of the week recently in anticipation of his 2014 album Along The Way, which (spoiler alert) is freaking incredible. Check out the full line up below and further details here.

Big Ears Festival 2014:

Steve Reich
Ensemble Signal
Jonny Greenwood
John Cale
Television
Tim Hecker
Oneohtrix Point Never
Julia Holter
Colin Stetson
Mark McGuire
Vatican Shadow
Nazoranai (Keiji Haino, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O’Malley)
So Percussion
Vladislav Delay
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog
Mark Ribot (performing the original score to Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid”)
Dean and Britta: 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests
Dean Wareham
Glenn Kotche Dawn Of Midi
Susanna
Laraaji
Son Lux
Nils Frahm
Bill Orcutt